County annual report · FIPS 06007
2020 Butte County, CA Power Outage Report
In 2020, customers in Butte County, CA went without power for an average of 41.1 hours, a total of 3.7M customer-hours (California average 6.3 hours). That ranks 11th worst of 57 California counties and 200th of 3,019 nationally.
Compared with CA, the US and 2019
Coverage line is EAGLE-I's share of California customers tracked each year.
Biggest outages in Butte County, 2020
The 10 outage episodes with the most customers out at once. Times are UTC.
| # | Started (UTC) | Ended (UTC) | Duration | Peak out | Customer-hours |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | September 8, 2020 05:00 | September 20, 2020 05:15 | 12d | 17,500 | 1.2M |
| 2 | September 20, 2020 08:00 | October 9, 2020 07:00 | 18d 23h | 15,254 | 765K |
| 3 | December 6, 2020 06:15 | December 6, 2020 11:00 | 4h 45m | 15,017 | 41K |
| 4 | December 6, 2020 12:00 | December 6, 2020 13:45 | 1h 45m | 14,954 | 22K |
| 5 | October 9, 2020 07:45 | October 30, 2020 01:30 | 20d 17h | 13,911 | 1.4M |
| 6 | May 18, 2020 15:15 | May 19, 2020 01:00 | 9h 45m | 6,670 | 12K |
| 7 | December 5, 2020 13:45 | December 5, 2020 21:30 | 7h 45m | 6,239 | 6,250 |
| 8 | August 17, 2020 10:30 | August 20, 2020 00:30 | 2d 14h | 5,795 | 43K |
| 9 | June 12, 2020 10:00 | June 12, 2020 11:45 | 1h 45m | 4,408 | 7,714 |
| 10 | January 20, 2020 08:30 | January 20, 2020 12:15 | 3h 45m | 3,815 | 12K |
Outage episodes by size in 2020: 122 reached 100+ customers, 39 reached 1,000+ customers, 5 reached 10,000+ customers.
Utility reliability filed with the EIA
SAIDI (average outage time per customer) and SAIFI (average interruptions per customer) that utilities serving Butte County reported on EIA Form 861 for 2020, or their most recent earlier filing. Utility-wide figures, not county-specific.
| Utility | EIA year | SAIDI | SAIFI | SAIDI excl. major events | SAIFI excl. major events |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pacific Gas & Electric Co. | 2020 | 7.4 hrs | 1.34 | 2.3 hrs | 1.04 |
| WAPA-- Western Area Power Administration | - | - | - | - | - |
| City of Biggs - (CA) | - | - | - | - | - |
| City of Gridley - (CA) | - | - | - | - | - |
About this data
- Outage figures come from DOE/ORNL EAGLE-I, which records customers out by county every 15 minutes. EAGLE-I tracked about 94% of California's customers in 2020; utilities it does not see are not counted.
- Hours per customer = outage customer-minutes ÷ 90,543 customers (ORNL modeled county customer count), including major storm days. It is comparable across counties but is not the SAIDI a utility files.
- An outage event is a continuous stretch with customers out; counts at 100, 1,000 and 10,000+ use its peak.
- Years loaded: 2015–2025. Butte County has data for 2017–2025.
Cite this report
MassOutage (massoutage.com), Butte County, CA annual power outage report, 2020, data as of Oct 3, 2026 02:41 UTC, sources: DOE EAGLE-I (https://eagle-i.doe.gov/); EAGLE-I modeled customer counts (MCC) (https://figshare.com/); EIA Form 861 (utility reliability) (https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/eia861/). https://massoutage.com/reports/2020/california/butte-county